Independence, county spar over animal shelter

Although Independence and Jackson County officials say they are working toward an agreement for operating a new regional animal shelter in Independence, correspondence between city and county officials indicates some distance between the two sides’ ideas of how it will be run.

County officials made it clear in a letter last month that they are concerned about the city’s financial commitment to the new, larger facility and might not even choose the city to run it.

“Due to the City’s budget proposal for operations, the County is pursuing other options,” county Chief Operating Officer Shelly Kneuvean wrote to City Manager Robert Heacock on July 19, in one of several letters and emails requested and obtained by The Examiner.

Heacock took exception to some of Kneuvean’s statements at the time, while stressing that the city still wants to make the partnership work out. On Monday, when discussing the issue before the City Council, he acknowledged the county’s decision to look at other options as it aims to run a “no-kill” shelter.

“We respect that,” Heacock said.

Meanwhile, there is no date for opening the $4.92 million shelter. In June, Heacock mentioned a goal of moving in this month. Since then, officials have suggested Oct. 1 or even Jan. 1. County officials say the shelter, on Missouri 78 east of the campus of Metropolitan Community College-Blue River, is nearly complete but not quite ready for anyone to move in.

County Legislator Dennis Waits, D-Independence, is a longtime animal advocate who has championed the new shelter. Earlier this month, he characterized the city-county discussion as not adversarial and “just friends” working toward a solution. This week, he issued a statement saying the county continues to work with the city “to ensure that the new shelter will be operated as a no-kill facility. We look forward to having Independence as a partner in this process.”

What happened?
Three years ago, the city and county signed a deal: The county would build a 27,000-square-foot shelter on city land. The city would run it, replacing the 7,000-square-foot shelter on Vista Avenue. It would serve unincorporated areas of the county and smaller towns, and it would be what’s called a “no-kill” shelter – an issue that would turn out to be a major sticking point.

Earlier this year, the city put operations of the shelter out for bid and got only one response, from the Heartland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (now called the Great Plains SPCA). That proposal went back and forth between the city and Great Plains three times before city rejected it as far too costly. The city decided to run the shelter itself through the Health Department, and by late June had posted openings ranging from vet tech to shelter manager. The city’s management analyst, Zachary Walker, backs up the city’s argument about Great Plains’ costs, and Great Plains has a report of its own saying the city is drastically underfunding its plans to run the shelter.

While both the city’s and the Great Plains’ proposals would fulfill the shelter management obligations outlined in the 2009 city-county agreement, Walker wrote that the Health Department proposal anticipated higher revenue collections, allowing the department lower net non-revenue supported costs of operating the shelter.

The county, Heacock said Monday night, has been pressing for a no-kill shelter starting on the new shelter’s first day of operations.

“That is not what was in the agreement,” Heacock said. “If you look at it, there is specific language that says we will work toward the goal of a no-kill shelter, but our understanding was that it was something we knew would have to be worked on with the new shelter ... we would work toward that as a goal.”

That discussion has been going for months, but correspondence among officials makes it clear that both sides have been proceeding on different tracks.

In late June, at the time the city’s animal services manager, Aimee Wells, resigned, Independence Health Director Larry Jones sent an email listing seven animal shelter positions the city was trying to fill: animal shelter manager, veterinarian, registered veterinary technician, volunteer coordinator, administrative specialist and two part-time jobs, clerk-typist and kennel officer. In July, however, Kneuvean, the county’s chief operating officer, cautioned Heacock in an email that “you may want to move a little slower on filling these positions. It would be unfortunate to have hired people for positions if the operations go another direction.”

That suggestion followed an exchange in mid-July in which the county made clear that it was looking at other options – and in which Heacock took exception to the county’s portrayal of the issue.

“The budgetary concerns have been conveyed to the City Council and members of the City’s executive staff for months,” Kneuvean wrote in her July 19 letter to Heacock. “No changes have been made in the financial support the City is willing to commit to the operation of the shelter. As such, the County has begun exploring other options and partners to move the facility operations in a new direction which will achieve the goal of a no-kill shelter. It is our hope that the City will remain a partner in some fashion as we devise a new strategy.”

That brought an immediate email response from Heacock, who said Kneuvean’s comments could paint the city in a bad light. He also underlined that the 2009 city-county agreement calls for the city to work toward having a no-kill shelter. “Working toward a goal is obviously not a promise of attainment right out of the gate,” he wrote. Heacock expressed a general level of frustration but did close with, “We have an excellent opportunity to continue the partnership that was started with this project, and I am committed to working with you in that direction.”

‘No-kill shelter’
The “no-kill” question has become a key issue.

The first point is that some dogs and cats – at least those that are aggressive or sick, or too malnourished to make it – will be euthanized at virtually any shelter. The issue is how many.

And there appears to be no hard-and-fast rule on what the “no kill” threshold is.

The Great Plains SPCA – the group whose bid the city rejected – says in its analysis of the new shelter that no-kill means putting down no more than 10 percent of all animals brought in, including feral cats, sick animals or aggressive animals, and it notes the 24 percent euthanasia rate at the Independence shelter in 2011. At 7,100 square feet, the existing shelter on Vista is just one-fourth the size of the new facility.

The city, however, points to Maddie’s Fund, an Atlanta group involved in the no-kill movement. Jones, the health director, says the current shelter meets that group’s “no-kill” definition as “a place where all healthy and treatable animals are saved and where only unhealthy and untreatable animals are euthanized.” The city also says the shelter met the no-kill definition for at least the first five months of 2012, accepting 1,216 dogs and cats and putting down just 82, for a euthanasia rate of 6.74 percent. Still, those numbers tend to go up in the summer, when lots of cats start coming in.

“That rate is very low for a shelter our size,” Jones said early this summer. “We were running, a year ago, a much higher rate.”

A third group, the No Kill Network, offers no hard definition but also does not list Independence among the 27 shelters in Missouri it classifies as no-kill. Only two in the metro area – Parkville and Wayside Waifs in south Kansas City – made the list.

As officials describe the issue, much of the no-kill problem is outside the doors of any animal shelter. The city cannot control the numbers of animals that come in. In Independence, there is a particular problem with cats, including those that come in as sickly, malnourished kittens that end up being euthanized. The Great Plains SPCA says Independence is the only metro shelter that takes in more cats than dogs.

That problem is only solved over the long term – fewer feral cats – through efforts such as spaying and neutering. As The Examiner reported last weekend, Great Plains SPCA just got a large grant to trap, neuter and release up to 2,400 cats in the city’s 64050 ZIP code. As officials describe it, that’s the sort of step – a communitywide effort – needed to get a handle on the larger problem and get the new shelter to no-kill status.

Money differences
No-kill status will still be out of reach for Independence, the Great Plains SPCA argues, if the city doesn’t commit to putting more people and more money into running the new shelter.

“The quality of care for the animal will be compromised if there are inadequate resources to care for the animals,” the group said in a report earlier this summer.

That report is highly critical of the city’s approach, saying it’s taking on a much larger facility than it has now but without putting in more money.

“To properly operate the shelter, provide humane treatment of the animals, and achieve a no-kill status, the shelter must be properly staffed, resourced and equipped,” the report says. “Regardless of who actually operates the shelter (the City or a nonprofit), it is going to require more financial investment on the part of the City of Independence to be successful.”

In his report to the City Council, Walker also wrote that Great Plains exceeds national guidelines for kennel staffing, while the Health Department fell below that mark.

“These guidelines are for paid staff only and do not take into account volunteers or private contractors,” Walker wrote. “However, both proposals achieve the desired animal-to-staff ratio.”

The new shelter has a little more than 27,000 square feet, and the city proposes to run it with nine people. By comparison, the 33,000-square-foot Wayside Waifs has 65 employees, according to the SPCA. Kansas City’s shelter – half the size of new regional shelter – takes in more animals, has 22 full-time equivalent employees and does not have no-kill status. Independence plans to rely heavily on volunteers, but the SPCA questions what the backup plan is if that doesn’t turn out to be a reliable way to operate.

“We’ve had really good, dedicated staff and volunteers over the years ...  a lot of folks very committed to animals in Independence,” Heacock told the council on Monday. “I, myself, am a huge animal lover – I think every dog I’ve ever had has been either a stray or has gone through a shelter. I know it’s really important, not only to care for those animals that are defenseless and can’t care for themselves, but to make sure that we’re working to educate folks and that we’re working to reduce the pet population.”